“A Prescription for Disaster”

FYIs #68 and #69 discussed the importance of communicating with your Members of Congress. This is a critical time, as Congress is starting work on deciding the federal budget for research and development next year. The budget deal, approved by Congress last night, sets a definite bottom line for all federal discretionary spending in FY 1998. The competition is going to be great in determining how Congress divides this money among hundreds of federal programs.

In dividing this money, Members of Congress pay close attention to what their constituents are saying. While other factors are important in making budget and policy decisions, constituent opinion, expressed in form of correspondence, personal visits, and telephone calls, can make the difference -- especially when money is tight.

Yet there is evidence that individuals in the science community are not speaking up. A recent American Chemical Society newsletter reports that Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), an important friend of science on the House VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee (with jurisdiction over NSF and NASA) said he “could count on one hand the number of postcards received supporting NSF.”He urged researchers to be “far more vociferous” in communicating with their Members of Congress about the value of science.

House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) echoes this theme. Last month, he said that scientists are “going to have to be much more proactive in contacting their own representatives, writing letters to the editor, getting the news media in to see the type of experiments that they’re doing, and, again, explaining in plain English, in 40-second sound bites, why this is a good idea, that taxpayers should spend their money on it. To suggest that we let George [Brown] and Jim [Sensenbrenner] do it by themselves is a prescription for disaster.”

It is expected that the thirteen House appropriations subcommittees will start dividing the FY 1998 money within the very near future. Of note for physicists are four bills:

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, STATE AND THE JUDICIARY: Spending on the upcoming 2000 census and United Nations obligations will make the subcommittee’s work difficult this year. ATP remains contentious, House Appropriations Chairman Robert Livingston (R-LA) stating, “This [budget] agreement does not prevent my committee from attempting to terminate or cut programs of questionable worth, such as ...the Advanced Technology Program.”

DEFENSE/NATIONAL SECURITY: Shrinking real-dollars for DOD’s technology base (6.1 and 6.2), and concerns about readiness promise another year of tight budgets. DOD calculates that in real dollar terms, tech base spending, if approved at the requested level, will be at a 35-year low.

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT: Major concerns about the management of the LHC seem to have been resolved, and this subcommittee has historically been supportive of most DOE physics-related programs. Yet to be seen is whether the downward spiral in fusion funding will abate. Key Republicans and Democrats on the House Science Committee sent a joint letter to appropriations subcommittee chairman Joseph McDade (R-PA) asking him to provide $240 million for the fusion program. On another front, McDade was recently quoted as saying, “My Number 1 priority is to provide for the nation’s security in the absence of [nuclear weapons] testing.”

VA, HUD, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES: This subcommittee is friendly toward NSF and NASA, but is going to have its hands full in finding ways to paying for HUD rent subsidies, natural disasters, and veterans’ health care.

A good sign of the support which science, in this case the National Science Foundation, has on Capitol Hill is a letter addressed to the leadership of the House VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. It calls for an increase of 7.2% in NSF’s FY 1998 funding. It was signed by more than 75 representatives.

The media has also been responsive to the message that science funding should increase. “U.S. News & World Report” carried a full-page editorial by David Gergen on May 19, 1997 (page 79) entitled “The 7 percent solution” stating "...serious funding for science is a vital national investment.” A “New York Times” editorial on May 15 had the same message, as did a long article on May 13. Earlier this year, “The Washington Times,” and “The Wall Street Journal” had similar articles.

While this attention to science funding is welcomed, it does not occur in a vacuum. Other interests are following a similar strategy. In many of these cases, strong constituent interest reinforces their message on a daily basis through letters, personal visits, and telephone calls.

Rep. Frelinghuysen needs more than five letters to point to as he makes the case for science. His colleagues - both on the appropriations committees, and on the House and Senate floors - need to have received similar correspondence with the same message from their constituents.

You are their constituents.

Now is the time to write.